Being Prepared for the Deals

Getting a great value for your cruise dollar is important to me. I spend way too much time obsessing about details and I am certain I am not the cruise lines target market. I figured I would take a minute to catch up with you to let me know what I almost put together in the hopes that maybe someone can benefit from my successes and mistakes.

I really wanted to go to Antarctica this year for many reasons. Antarctica may be changing but it is also becoming much busier as many cruise lines are jumping into that market. There are some fantastic deals even for solo travellers to Antarctica this year. There was a short window where it could be done for $3000 for two weeks including airfare. It is true that is not exactly a budget cruise, but for Antarctica that is an amazing deal.

At the moment, many cruise fares are still low and I suspect they will stay there because airfare is way up. My $950 airfare on Delta is now $3000. I may not have said it yet on this blog but airfare is your biggest enemy in getting the value cruise. I'll share some secrets with you now.

I love Delta airlines. They have treated me very well over the years and I have the Delta American Express and I use it for almost all of my expenses so I can then use those skymiles to travel. Skymiles are especially useful because you can find the perfect cruise and then wait for the cruise fare to drop knowing that your airfare is locked in. If the cruise doesn't work out, you cancel the flight and get your skymiles back. Note that Delta has a pretty liberal cancellation policy these days and will often refund for ecredit if you pay cash for the flight and then it doesn't work out. Book those flights ahead of time. I'm telling you this because I made a mistake and did not do that.

Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are here, I'm a little off my game. I should have been prepared with airfare locked in and cruises picked out ahead of time (I do have many cruises that I check each week). So far, I have seen many prices rise for Black Friday. MSC had a fantastic promotion a couple weeks ago with free balcony upgrades that I blogged about.  Norwegian is offering free gratuities for Balcony and above and some sailings have no solo supplement. I'll definitely be on the hunt today. 

Happy Cruising!